


Standing in the sea, looking at the sky

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hallucinations, M/M, Stream of Consciousness, Suicide Attempt, the sea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 14:19:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16431044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Draco likes the sea, likes the sounds of the waves, likes how it calms him, so he stands with the sea circling his waist, looking at the sky wondering if the water knows he's crying.





	Standing in the sea, looking at the sky

Draco had taken off his clothes. Jacket perfectly folded, shoes lying side by side, socks rolled into a ball inside them. Everything neat, everything perfect. He trapped the envelope under the heel. It wasn’t easy to think about what was inside, but it was better they knew than be left guessing forever. He looked at the name, staring at it, wondering what it had all meant. He turned away before he could be reminded of everything that name stood for, of every wonder he had shared with that name. He turned away before he could change his mind.  
The sand was soft and slipped between his toes, shells occasionally biting his skin. He didn’t think about it, didn’t look down, only out across the sea. He could practically see himself standing there, a single blot on the landscape, a grey silhouette standing barely visible against the sky.  
The sand was wet now, wet and cold and hard beneath his feet. The tide was coming in. Lapping so gently at his feet, licking his toes and tempting him to come to it. He walked into its loving arms. The water was so cold and grey, murky with sand and silt but the floor still smooth on the underside of his feet. Seafoam, like white clouds, clung to his trousers, its wet fingers slipping up his leg and making him shiver. Still, he walked on, staring out to the horizon. Grey. That was what it was, grey, blurring the distinction between land and sky until the world was nothing more than a thread of smoke spiralling from the dreams of greater being. The air was damp and saturated with salt, it stuck to his skin, gentle droplets collecting on his eyelashes filling the world with gentle refractions of white. It was calming to be with the sea, waves curling around his knees. He was shivering, hands trailing in the water, leaving heavy ripples behind him. They would be extinguished in a few yards, lost to the world, just as he would be, in a few more yards. When he looked down at those hands they didn’t feel like his, they didn’t feel like anything anymore, too pale and dusted with a chill. He didn’t take them out of the water. He almost liked the blue tinge it gave them, the ghostly spectre it made them as they shone so bright in the water’s gloom.  
There were many things he should do, he could hear them screaming at the back of his mind, telling him to go back, pretend none of this had ever happened, pretend like he always did that the world was really fine. But that voice was faint, dulled by the rolling of the waves. All he could really hear was the ever-present static, that emptiness, that numbness that so pained his heart.  
The water circled his thighs, chilling his blood and slowing his heart, he could feel it, throbbing softly, telling him to take another step and another and another. The waves rose and fell and rose and fell carrying him to his fate, carrying him somewhere he would be safe from what was real. The wind was bitter on his cheeks, but he barely felt it anymore, he barely felt anything anymore.  
Draco didn’t know when he started to cry, he only found his cheeks were soggy, a stream of wet cutting through the salt. He stopped walking, the sea stroking his hips, and stared at the sky. The expanse of grey stared back him. In it, he saw every question he’d ever asked, every confusion, every fear, every hope and every dream, every failure, every disappointment, and every horror he’d witnessed. He could taste the salt in his mouth and the wetness of tears on his lips. He wanted to wipe away the tears, but he couldn’t raise his hands, so he stood: a small boy in a great big sea. Too scared to say what he’s feeling, too scared of being alone, too scared of the future. Draco knew it was weak that he couldn’t bear to take another step, he knew he was weak, that he was too cowardly to even die properly. Standing there in a world of grey, a haze of rain pattering on his skin and the waves churning at his feet, he felt so alone. 

He didn’t hear the calling of his name because the waves were crashing together in his head. He didn’t hear the splashing because the thudding of his heart was so loud. The world was less cold now, he barely felt the constant shaking of his hands. He did feel his body kneeling though, and the water so smooth against his skin, sliding over his face and submerging him in a new world of black. He could feel the burning in his lungs, but they didn’t feel like his lungs, he could hear the screaming in his head for him to stand up, but his body felt so safe suspended here in the dark.  
Warm hands grabbed his arms and pulled him back towards that old grey world. Air felt like poison in his lungs, harsh and painful, oxygen forcing itself into him. He looked up through salt-stained eyes and saw an angel with wet hair and desperation in his eyes.  
Harry held him as they sat on the sand. Fingers stroking his hair, comforting words in his ear and concern splashed all over his face. They didn’t talk. They just sat there until Draco could feel his hands again, feel his cheeks, feel the tears. Feel Harry’s fingers interlink with his and hold him as he cried on his shoulder soaking his jacket with algae and sea foam. Harry didn’t mind, Harry never minded being that person who was happy to just sit and listen. Harry who was a rock, the warmth to his cold, the brightness to his gloom. Harry whose lips were like petals and whose smile reminded him of the first day in Spring. Harry who he had loved since the beginning. 

He couldn’t stop his teeth chattering or his heart hammering as the world slowly came into focus again. The haze that clouded his vision lifting for a while and he was sitting on the beach, alone. Harry not there holding his hand, Harry not there smiling, Harry not there. That made him cry more. Sitting listening to the slow heave of the waves with no one’s hand squeezing his own, knowing Harry had saved him without even knowing it. He had never had Harry, he was for someone else to hold at night and someone else to love. Harry was nothing more than a dream that kept him from drowning in the endless expanse of nothing that filled his artificial world. 

Draco sat on the beach, sea water dripping from his hair staring at the sea. He could almost see a grey blot on the landscape, a figure standing in the water and watching the horizon and he wondered for a moment if he was really alive at all. If he was, he’d be back here soon, when the sea was colder and darker and filled with dangerous things, when there would be no one here to save him.

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, this is my first time writing this 'pairing', so I hope it isn't too dreadful.  
> Secondly, I didn't mean this to be quite as depressing as it turned out, sorry.


End file.
